Children’s Book | The Prince and the Pea – Denise Deegan

8th November 2017/

Once upon a time, a King came up with a cunning plan to find a genuine Princess for his son. Only a true Princess would be allowed to marry the Prince.

Introduction

Have you heard of the King who wanted to protect his Kingdom by forbidding his son to marry anyone but a real Princess? The Prince has to do what his father tells him – he is the King, after all. So one Princess after another come to the castle and are put to the ultimate test: are they for real or not? Follow me…

Storyline

A Kingdom must have an heir. A little Prince or Princess to become King or Queen one day. It is as simple as that. To that end, the King tells his son, Prince Richard, to find a suitable Princess to marry. Not just any girl – a real Princess, daughter of a King and Queen. How to find such a treasure? The King has come up with such a clever idea – a test. If the girl is a true Princess, she will notice. If she fails the test she has proven herself not to be a real Princess. Easy-peasy, you would say! But Prince Richard is bored with these fake Princesses, he cannot stand it anymore. Richard dreams of love. He wants to marry because he has fallen in love, not because he has to. In his royal chambers, the maid, Rosy, lights the fire and suddenly, Richard realises that there are people working for him to make his life comfortable. But does he take an interest in who they are? What is the meaning of his life and why does he need a chambermaid like Rosie to show him the answer?

My Thoughts

Based on the fairy-tale ‘The Princess and the Pea,’ The Prince and the Pea is an enchanting story of love and perseverance. Prince Richard is a young man who, until now, did not realise anything happening around him, he just took it for granted – almost as if he was afraid to think for himself. It takes someone like the chambermaid, Rosie (a determined young lady with a pureness at heart), to open up his eyes to the reality and the world outside. He might have been living in a dream but all those people who work for him are definitely not dreaming: they work long hours to provide for their families.

As all fairy-tales, ‘The Prince and the Pea’ has a deeper layer and shows us society and its prejudices and how we have to initiate actions ourselves to make change happen. Denise Deegan’s story is engaging and heartwarming, destined for children of all ages.

About the Author

Denise Deegan lives in Dublin with her family where she regularly dreams of sunshine, a life without cooking and her novels being made into movies. Denise has been a nurse, a china restorer, a pharmaceutical sales rep, a public relations officer, an entrepreneur and a college lecturer. Her most difficult job was being a checkout girl, although ultimately this experience did inspire a short story… Denise writes for both adults and teenagers. Her novels have been published by Penguin, Random House, Hachette and Lake Union Publishing. Writing under the pen name Aimee Alexander, Denise’s contemporary family dramas have become international best-sellers on Kindle. Through the Barricades (my review), won the SCBWI Spark Award 2016 AND 2017. Her writing for Young Adults includes the much-loved contemporary trilogy, The Butterfly Novels: And By The Way, And For Your Information and And Actually. Denise writes women’s fiction as Aimee Alexander including Pause to Rewind, The Accidental Life of Greg Millar and All We Have Lost.